New Yorkers: Love holidays, hate crowds? There's an app for that.
Looking to avoid an elbow to the face? Neiman Group wishes you a preemptively safe holiday with GoCrowdless.com, a tool that aggregates Foursquare check-in data for 20 of New York's most popular holiday attractions, including Saks, FAO Schwarz and the Bryant Park Ice Rink.
At a glance, see when the crowds are thinnest -- and when you should avoid crossing merchant thresholds at all costs:
The service isn't perfect (apparently the ideal "holiday shopping" time for Union Square is Sunday, 1 AM?!!), but I'm sure it'll smoothen out if enough people show interest.
A benefit of this site is that it doesn't rely on enormous adoption of its own tool in order to be useful; it's just aggregating from the thousands of check-ins flooding Foursquare at any given moment. So feel free to use it now, and use it liberally.
"For most, Foursquare is just a fun way to let their friends know what they’re up to. But by developing a system that allows us to aggregate and sort that check-in data, we have turned their fun check-ins into a powerful tourist resource," beams VP-innovation George Ward of Nieman Labs.
But for those filling their Advent calendars around GoCrowdless' data, he hastens to add, "Foursquare data is not a perfect proxy for the overall population. But it’s a helpful snapshot."
